Control
by Saf Dawnheart
Summary: He didn't mean to run into her. And he definitely didn't anticipate the mental conflict that results. — Holly/Berry.


Kay, so... I really have no clue where this came from. XD I just remember thinking about how I needed to write some BerryHolly (or HollyBerry, whatever catches your fancy, lol), and then the rest of this fic somehow just wrote itself. Of course, by that same token, this was also supposed to have a darker ending and have a LOT less HoneyBerry and PoppyBerry. XD

At any rate, enjoy!

**_Disclaimer-_** Oh yeah, I totally own _Warriors._ That is COMPLETELY why I'm on a site called FANfiction-dot-net. Really, now.

* * *

The sunlight flickers down through the trees, casting a dappled shadow on the ground that shifts with every tug the wind makes on the tree leaves. A lone, distinctively feline shape pads through the forest, a cream-colored silhouette whose dark blue gaze currently roves about the area, searching for any shift of movement.

Berrynose's ears prick as a sound makes itself known to his ears. Within a few seconds, he spots the source, a mouse digging fastidiously on the ground in front of him. Fluidly, he drops into a hunter's crouch and begins creeping toward it, smirking to himself that such an easy catch came along on his solo hunt.

The process that ends the mouse's life and boosts the ThunderClan warrior's morale passes quickly, and Berrynose scrapes a bit of dirt over the fresh-kill before moving on. _I've got time; I can pick that up later,_ he thinks, and feels the familiar rush of pride and smugness that he is the one in control here. That he has freedom to do whatever he wants.

He inhales the fresh greenleaf air as he continues on his way, as he reflects on the reason for deciding to go out here by himself in the first place. The thought dampens his triumph a bit, causes melancholia and annoyance alike to mar his once-pleased attitude. Under any other circumstances he would have shoved his way into a patrol and been done with it – what's a good warrior without strength and hunting skills, after all? – but today, something had felt different.

Oh, wait. Berrynose huffs, a tiny sound that escapes him despite his knowledge that the prey would hear it from far off. He knows why he came out here.

The reason is twofold, really. The first part is that Poppyfrost refuses to leave him alone. Even with his stubbornly ignoring her, she keeps following him wherever he goes. In fact, the only way he's managed to get away from her for this long is because he got Birchfall to distract her while the cream-colored tom sneaked out of camp into the territory beyond.

That's the part that stimulates the surge of annoyance throughout his body.

The second part – the part that tempers the irritation toward Poppyfrost's indefatigable advances with sadness – involves said annoying tortoiseshell's sister.

How it reminds him of the way Honeyfern pursued him, back when she was alive.

The sigh that escapes Berrynose now contains more than a hint of suppressed grief. Immediately, he tells himself to stop wallowing in it – that no good warrior drowns in the past, instead only living in the present – and yet to his frustration the ache in his chest only continues to increase in intensity.

Just remembering the day she had died pulls a snarl from Berrynose's throat, one that, to his frustration, is all but choked out and filled with sorrow. He represses the urge to slash the nearest tree just in time, although if he wants to be completely honest with himself, his random outbursts must have all but scared the prey off already.

As a result of his attentiveness toward his own thoughts and not to the outside world, he doesn't see the shadow lurking in the foliage around him, the shadow that weaves through the abundant patches of sunlight and shade and manages to find the dark spaces in between.

The shadow that eyes him with a gaze wreathed in emerald fire.

He does, however, hear the rustle in the bushes nearby, and whirls around just in time to spot the leaves swish back into place. "Who's there?" he snarls, inwardly berating himself for not having noticed an intruder on his territory. Grief does that to him – all but immobilizes his common sense and ability to detect anomalies around him.

His eyes narrow at the lack of response from his newfound companion, and he finds himself opening his mouth to take in the scents of the air. He is fully prepared to gag with the force of ShadowClan's disgusting stench hitting his scent glands, to chase the trespasser off with both tooth and nail if that's what it takes.  
What he's _not_ prepared for comes in the form of an entirely familiar scent. One that is ThunderClan, and yet not.

"Who…?" he begins helplessly, not sure where the question will terminate. A repetition of his prior demand, probably_. _

But he never gets to think more on that, because the next thing he knows a dark, distinctively feline shape has flown out of the darkness offered by the trees – more like _detached itself_, really – and pinned him to the leaf-clad floor.

Berrynose gasps, a last remnant of the air having been thoroughly thrust out of him, and immediately his instincts hark back to Brambleclaw's training. _When you're pinned on your back, the best thing you can do is push them back with your hind legs –_

And then he gets a better look at his assailant, at those haunted green eyes, that fluffy dark fur. Suddenly, any thought of fighting back has completely escaped him.

"Hollyleaf?" he gasps.

Speaking her name turns out to be the worst mistake he could have made, because suddenly the weight of her paw against his neck has him fighting for breath.

_"Don't call me that,"_ she hisses, and he has to do a mental double take in lieu of a physical one, his body being too inhibited to do even that much. Because while Hollyleaf had – _has,_ he corrects himself, because obviously she's still alive – _has_ always been a passionate cat, her fire and fervency never manifested itself like this. Not with such… so much _venom,_ and anger.

And, he soon becomes rather acutely aware, the urge to kill.

Specifically, toward him.

He does not quite know the cause of that urge, why she is all but crushing his windpipe, but he knows he will not have much more time to worry about it if he doesn't act soon.

Berrynose all but pushes his words out of the very limited airspace in his throat; they burn on the way out and issue out of him with the distinctive sound of a cat with smoke-filled lungs. "You won't kill me," he rasps.

The show of bravado makes a very subtle effect on Hollyleaf, in that the blazing in her eyes – of what, he wonders; madness, or fury, or something that toes the line between? – dies down, if only slightly. In the next moment, though, her gaze narrows into luminescent green slits that continue to bore into his own dark blue eyes. "Really," she drawls, and a trace of the old Hollyleaf manages to worm its way into that simple word.

And in spite of the fact that that accursed paw pressing down on his source of precious air holds his life in its small, black-pelted confines, Berrynose feels a smirk cross his face. Maybe the dizziness from the lack of air is taking over, but he feels somewhat smug. Oh, but he's got her now. "Yeah, really," he chokes out. "Because it's against the warrior code to kill a fellow warrior."

_That_ gets her attention. Much to Berrynose's relief, Hollyleaf draws back, a stunned look sweeping over her face. She was never good at concealing her emotions, and even with the madness that clearly holds sway over her, this fact has stayed the same.

He is too busy gulping in sweet, sweet air to really notice the question that skitters across the proverbial surface of his thoughts, like a bug across the lake. But fleetingly, he wonders what else about Hollyleaf – warrior-code-preaching, fiery, apparently-not-dead Hollyleaf – has changed and remained the same.

Just as soon as the shock appears on her countenance, though, it disappears, replaced by a kind of slow anger that Berrynose understands all too well. He felt it not too long ago, on the day Honeyfern had died.

The way she writhed and cried for help, and StarClan and Leafpool had done _nothing._

"My very existence is a breach of the warrior code," Hollyleaf spits. And so much self-loathing engulfs her words that Berrynose takes a mental step back, only widening his eyes in physical conveyance of his reaction. "My mother is a medicine cat, and my father is a WindClan warrior –"

"Well, duh," Berrynose can't help but snort, effectively cutting off any rant she may have been leading up to. "You kind of told the entirety of the forest at the last Gathering."

The anger that previously covered Hollyleaf's countenance escalates into pure rage, and panic surges within him, that she will complete her prior intent of choking him to death. Then her fur lies flat, if only somewhat, much to his surprise and relief.

However, her wrath only ebbs so she can turn away and begin muttering to herself. The sight of his killer-to-be having turned her back on him coaxes a frown onto Berrynose's face, as the action of her ignoring him almost seems to indicate she no longer regards him as being worth her time.

"I shouldn't be alive," is what she says, over and over again, and the self-deprecation from her voice has returned, only this time carrying a much more bitter tang than before.

Of course, only when she begins peppering her steady stream of repetition with remarks pertaining to StarClan having punished her does Berrynose decide he's had enough.

"Oh, please," he growls. Hollyleaf turns back toward him, her eyes steadily narrowing and claws unsheathing, but he barrels on, heedless. _"You're_ the idiot who decided to go spill your biggest secret in front of StarClan and everyone. Whatever happened to you, you brought on yourself."

Even as he utters that caustic comment, though, he can feel the resolve that initially made him speak them falter. Frustration rises within him as he gropes for the reason why, only to fail in his search.

"And don't ever say you shouldn't be alive," he hears someone say. It takes him a few seconds to realize the words have come from him, but by then, it's too late. He has to make her see this before life comes crashing back down on them and he returns to a ThunderClan with one less capable warrior. "You _did_ run into the tunnels, right? If you're still alive, then some cat up in StarClan must have their eye on you."

_Like Honeyfern, maybe. _

Silence. Hollyleaf eyes him for a few moments, opens her mouth to speak.

"Berrynose!"

Both cats' heads whip toward the direction of the voice. Berrynose muffles a curse behind the confines of his lips. _Poppyfrost. _Lovely.

He turns back toward Hollyleaf, only to find that dark-furred face mere whisker-lengths from his. A ragged breath escapes him, rasping under the duress of the fear oozing back into his body, and the luminosity of those green eyes leaves dual imprints in his vision when he blinks.

"Tell anyone I'm alive," that madness-tinged voice hisses into his ear, "and I will make you regret that I let you live today."

And yet something else lurks in the back of her voice.

Berrynose finds himself rooted to the ground, unable to move or speak. In the brief interim between raising and lowering his eyelids, she is gone.

An instant later, a tortoiseshell-pelted shape appears, its pale coloring almost painful in contrast to the darkness that pervaded Berrynose's senses earlier. "Berrynose," Poppyfrost says, half breathless. Not from nearly being strangled, but from fatigue. He guesses she must have run to get here, must have heard his voice.

He wonders if she heard Hollyleaf.

"Are you all right?" Poppyfrost is asking him desperately. "I saw you'd left camp, and now you look like you've just seen StarClan come down."

The irony almost makes Berrynose laugh. _If you only knew._

And for the briefest of moments, seeing the sister of the cat he had loved and lost, whose mannerism in padding after him reminds him so completely of Honeyfern's, Berrynose wants to tell her everything.

But he doesn't doubt the reality behind Hollyleaf's parting promise. He doesn't understand why she wants no cat to know she is alive; one would think she would at least want to let her brothers know she is safe.

And yet, much to his own confusion, he understands what drove her into madness. Into revealing her ugliest secret to everyone she knows and then fleeing from it. Knowing her own life violates every belief she had worshiped throughout her life must have torn her apart.

And now, he realizes, she doesn't want anyone else to know that such a blight upon the world still lives and breathes and exists.

Now that he is thinking about it, he also realizes what had lingered in her tone in her parting words. _Tell anyone I'm alive, and I will make you regret that I let you live today,_ she had said. At the time he had only registered the blind fury in her voice, but now he realizes something else was there.

An earnest kind of _pleading. _An unspoken _please don't reveal my existence to anyone please please please._

Normally Berrynose does not bother thinking this deeply into little things like this. Like the tone of a she-cat who, before now, he has exchanged maybe a few sentences with. He never bothers reading into much – it makes a warrior's life much less difficult to take things at face value, in his opinion – and so the reason behind his doing so now escapes him entirely.

However, he does know one thing.

The last thing he stepped back and thought about like this was Honeyfern. Honeyfern and her feelings for him, and whether or not his budding, grudging regard for her was the start of his reciprocating those feelings.

Suddenly, the reason why he's still thinking about this – only moments after it occurred, nonetheless – is clear to him. Incidentally, it's the same reason why he felt a twinge of regret at near snarling at her earlier.

It's because Hollyleaf – the new, all-but-crazed, broken, desperately weak Hollyleaf – intrigues him. The way she, and only she, managed to make him lose the control he had so reveled in at the start of this little hunt, the hunt that had yielded a more riveting result than any rodent or bird ever could have. And he finds himself wanting to honor her request because of that result and the curiosity it stirs in him.

It is twisted, and he knows it. But he also knows it's the best he can do for her right now.

The _only_ thing he can do for her right now.

"Berrynose…?" Poppyfrost waves her tail in front of the cream-colored tom's face.

He snaps back to attention, realizing the tortoiseshell still waits for a response.

And he lies. Spins some farfetched fabrication that he saw a particularly large mouse, only for it to get away at the last second. The lie has a pretty good foundation, in his opinion; the way he throws in a false description of the sound the "mouse" made as it fled has even Berrynose believing it.

He does feel guilty, yes, at lying to his Clanmate the way he is. But as Poppyfrost nods with relief and expresses her concern for his well-being, he manages to suppress it, for now.

As he follows Poppyfrost back to the camp, he suddenly remembers the mouse that he actually _did_ catch. And so he promises her he'll meet her at the hollow; she smiles and goes on; and he begins to make his way back to where he had buried the fresh-kill.

Before he leans down to begin unearthing the prey from its imposed grave, however, Berrynose looks around with narrowed eyes. Only when no green-eyed shadow appears even in his periphery does he feel safe enough to speak.

"You're welcome," he mutters.

A bush rustles from behind him, and he jumps nearly out of his fur, briefly terrified that either Poppyfrost or the one to whom he was addressing his words has returned. But it turns out to have only been the wind, and so, grumbling to himself, Berrynose begins to scrape the dirt away from his earlier kill.

The amused purr from the foliage nearby escapes his hearing, though, all but swept away by the breeze as it is. And the fire in those blazing green eyes softens, if only for a moment.

Then the shadow whirls on its heel and vanishes.

* * *

For the record, I DID have a much darker ending planned. Not the appearance of derpy!Berrynose. Lmao.

Reviews go great with this pizza I'm eating! -omnomnom- :3


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